Framingham School Committee: Teacher evaluations an unfunded mandate

Wednesday

Jun 7, 2017 at 9:52 PMJun 8, 2017 at 7:27 AM

Jim Haddadin Daily News Staff @JimHaddadin

FRAMINGHAM — After spending more than $1 million to comply with a new teacher evaluation system created by the state, school officials will press the State Auditor’s Office to rule that Framingham and other communities should be reimbursed for costs associated with the program.

The School Committee on Wednesday mulled plans to ask State Auditor Suzanne Bump to rule the new teacher evaluation system put in place five years ago by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education imposes a financial burden on cities and towns.

The ruling could be a first step in getting compensation from state lawmakers for Framingham’s compliance costs.

After the program was set up in 2012, Framingham was forced to hire 14 additional vice principals — at a cost of more than $1.2 million — whose primary focus is handling the teacher evaluations, School Committee member Michelle Brosnahan said. The district also spent $60,000 on computer software to support the initiative, and provided two hours of professional development time to each of the district’s roughly 700 teachers to allow them to organize their documentation, she said.

“Our town, soon to become a city, is desperately trying to keep up with our rising costs and not overburden our taxpayers while providing the best education possible to our students in order that they may become successful productive members of society,” Brosnahan said, reading from a draft letter to the auditor.

“We simply cannot bear this cost any longer,” she wrote. “We are asking for your help to put a halt to these unanticipated, unfunded costs and require the state to fund this expensive requirement.”

In 2011, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved new evaluation frameworks designed to provide teachers with more feedback and give them resources for improvement. The evaluation system, first used in the 2012-13 school year, aims to help teachers grow while also establishing a high bar for tenure and shortening timelines for identifying underperforming teachers.

Revamping the evaluation framework was one of the major initiatives Massachusetts undertook as part of its application for federal Race to the Top education funding.

In Framingham, 85.5 percent of educators received grades of “proficient” for the 2015-16 school year, while 6.8 percent were categorized as “exemplary.” Only 7.5 percent of teachers and administrators got ratings of “needs improvement,” while 0.2 percent scored “unsatisfactory.”

A law passed in 1980 empowers the Auditor's Office to determine that state mandates impose direct costs on municipalities, allowing them to seek compensation from the state. Swaying the auditor’s office could give the town a stronger case to seek funding from the Legislature. Framingham could also use the determination to seek an exemption to the program in court.

School officials estimate the cost of performing the teacher evaluations is now close to $1.4 million. Those costs will likely climb higher, Brosnahan said, since the district anticipates it must purchase new software, requiring an additional round of teacher training.

The School Committee plans to take up the matter again next week. The group asked school administrators to prepare a detailed breakdown of their expenses, focusing on professional development and software costs.

Jim Haddadin can be reached at 617-863-7144 or jhaddadin@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimHaddadin.